


Finding Meaning in This World of Darkness

by Michelle_A_Emerlind



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Almost Prose Poetry or Flash Fiction You Decide, M/M, Rickyl Writers' Group, Rickyl Writers' Group Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 04:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6408334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelle_A_Emerlind/pseuds/Michelle_A_Emerlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl thinks about all the times people have said "I love you" to him and what they mean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Meaning in This World of Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> For the Rickyl Writers' Group challenge to do a fic where the first paragraph was 100 words, the second 90, the third 80 and then down until the last is 10. I made each paragraph their own so they are almost prose poems or flash fiction. You pick!

_I love you_ , his mother had said. Had pulled him close in fear and desperation that a boy at eight couldn’t quite comprehend, but that Daryl now looks back upon with empathy as deep as wells. She was dead by the next day, licked up in flames hotter than Daryl would ever feel again and he remembers standing there, outside his house, praying she wasn’t there and knowing she was and even through all the terror and the heartache, the punch that has never left his gut and keeps it shut up tight, he had wondered--what did love mean?

 _I love you_ , his dad had said--had used that as the defense for everything he did. Tough love. Righteous love. Actions meant for something. But the cruel thing had always been that he _had_ loved him. Daryl remembers clearly his grandfather telling him about the only time his father ever cried, standing over his mom in the hospital, holding Daryl, saying how happy he was to have him and Merle. But that was before it all went to shit in a handbasket. Daryl wonders if it ever meant anything.

 _I love you_ , Merle had said. Merle had always said. Merle would always say and it would always be with Daryl, right there in his ear, deep down in his heart. Between the _Darylena_ and the _get up, you’re better than this_ , it was always there--felt if so rarely spoken. Daryl knew what it meant then. Was old enough to--sacrifice and hadn’t Merle sacrificed? Daryl clung to it, _believed_ it, but also believed this--there was no one else.

 _I love you_ , his mind had said, the words broken across it crystal clear like newly formed glass and his heart pounded with just that one image--Rick standing there, shaven and in his cop uniform, everything about him _new, new, new_ and _stranger_ , but his eyes alight with something even lighter than air, a kind of overwhelming honesty that shook Daryl down to the core of his roots.

 _I love you_ , Carol had said. This was shocking, standing close to her at the prison, double watch and the night around them heavy in the air with the screech of nighthawks. “Only thing I loved before was Sophia,” she whispered, without a sigh. The hardness of that woman. “Love you all now, though. Couldn’t live without you all.”

 _I love you_ , Rick had said. _But I can’t_. So he had tried other things--women, leadership, parenting, the break and rush of insanity closing around his throat like a vice grip that no matter what Daryl did, he could never loosen. But Daryl was always patient. So he waited.

 _I love you_ , Carl had said. _And he does, too_. Eyes wiser than any of them--stronger, quicker, broken spirit unbroken, patched like only a child could do. And Daryl nodded, unable to fight him in the face of truth.  

 _I love you_ , Judith had said, echoing her brother with her eyes, so blue now like her daddy’s, full of hope and trust like the beginning. And Daryl’s heart breaks.

 _I love you,_ Rick says finally, whispers it against his skin and Daryl understands everything in the face of it.

 _I love you_ , Daryl says back--sure of the meaning now.

 


End file.
